Now, come on, arraign with me luxury and Nomentanus; for reason will evince that foolish
spendthrifts are mad. This fellow, as soon as he received a thousand talents of patrimony,
issues an order that the fishmonger, the fruiterer, the poulterer, the perfumer, and the
impious gang of the Tuscan alley, sausage-maker, and buffoons, the whole shambles, together
with [all] Velabrum, should come to his house in the morning. What was the consequence? They
came in crowds.

The pander makes a speech: "Whatever I, or whatever each of these has at home, believe it to
be yours: and give your order for it either directly, or to-morrow." Hear what reply the
considerate youth made: "You sleep booted in Lucanian snow, that I may feast on a boar: you
sweep the wintery seas for fish: I am indolent, and unworthy to possess so much. Away with it:
do you take for your share ten hundred thousand sesterces; you as much; you thrice the sum,
from whose house your spouse runs, when called for, at midnight."

The son of Aesopus, [the actor] (that he might, forsooth, swallow a million of sesterces at
a draught), dissolved in vinegar a precious pearl, which he had taken from the ear of Metella:
how much wiser was he [in doing this,] than if he had thrown the same into a rapid river, or
the common sewer? The progeny of Quintius Arrius, an illustrious pair of brothers, twins in
wickedness and trifling and the love of depravity, used to dine upon nightingales bought at a
vast expense: to whom do these belong? Are they in their senses? Are they to be marked with
chalk, or with charcoal?

A proverbial expression. Are they to be acquitted or condemned? Are they wise or
foolish?

If an [aged person] with a long beard should take a delight to build baby-houses, to yoke
mice to a go-cart, to play at odd and even, to ride upon a long cane, madness must be his
motive. If reason shall evince, that to be in love is a more childish thing than these; and
that there is no difference whether you play the same games in the dust as when three years
old, or whine in anxiety for the love of a harlot: I beg to know, if you will act as the
reformed Polemon

Polemon was a young Athenian, who, running one day through the streets, inflamed with
wine, had the curiosity to go into the school of Xenocrates to hear him. The philosopher
dexterously turned his discourse upon sobriety, and spoke with so much force, that Polemon
from that moment renounced his intemperance, and pursued his studies with such application,
as to succeed Xenocrates in his school. Thus, as Valerius Maximus remarks, being cured by
the wholesome medicine of one oration, he became a celebrated philosopher, from an infamous
prodigal.

did of old? Will you lay aside those ensigns of your disease, your rollers, your
mantle, your mufflers; as he in his cups is said to have privately torn the chaplet from his
neck, after he was corrected by the speech of his fasting master? When you offer apples to an
angry boy, he refuses them: here, take them, you little dog; he denies you: if you don't give
them, he wants them. In what does an excluded lover differ [from such a boy]; when he argues
with himself whether he should go or not to that very place whither he was returning without
being sent for, and cleaves to the hated doors? "What shall I not go to her now, when she
invites me of her own accord? or shall I rather think of putting an end to my pains? She has
excluded me; she recalls me: shall I return? No, not if she would implore me." Observe the
servant, not a little wiser: "0 master, that which has neither moderation nor conduct, can not
be guided by reason or method. In love these evils are inherent; war [one while], then peace
again. If any one should endeavor to ascertain these things, that are various as the weather,
and fluctuating by blind chance; he will make no more of it, than if he should set about
raving by right reason and rule." Whatwhen, picking the pippins

The allusion is to a habit of determining the good or bad fortune of love by trying to
strike the ceiling of a room with the pippins of apples. They were raised by pressing them
between the first two fingers. If they struck the ceiling, it was considered a good
omen.

from the Picenian apples, you rejoice if haply you have hit the vaulted roof; are you
yourself? What-when you strike out faltering accents from your antiquated palate, how much
wiser are you than [a child] that builds little houses To the folly [of love] add bloodshed,
and stir the fire with a sword.

Ignum gladio scrutare, a proverbial precept of Pythagoras, "Do not stir the fire with a sword." Our poet
uses it. as an easy transition from the folly to the madness of lovers. We shall have
another proverb in the same sense, Oleum adde camino.

I ask you, when Marius lately, after he had stabbed Hellas, threw himself down a precipice, was he raving mad? Or will you absolve
the man from the imputation of a disturbed mind, and condemn him for the crime, according to
your custom, imposing on things names that have an affinity in signification?